NFL free agency's siren song sounds a discordant note

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, February 25, 1996

Not long ago, the Dallas Cowboys would have been called a dynasty. Now, they're only a farm team.

In 72 hours, the Cowboys lost two free agents to the Raiders, Larry Brown, the MVP of the Super Bowl, and Russell Maryland, the first pick in the 1991 draft.

They join Tony Casillas, Ken Norton Jr., Jimmie Jones, Jim Jeffcoat, Kevin Gogan, James Washington, Alvin Harper and Kenny Gant, who the last two years left Dallas to sign with other teams.

The idea behind free agency was that guys who felt they never had a chance to play ahead of Emmitt Smith or Jerry Rice could find their place on another roster and in the headlines. No one surmised that Pro Bowl candidates would be moving around like so many pieces on a huge chessboard.

Bryan Cox to Chicago, Leon Searcy to Jacksonville, Eric Davis to Carolina, those are the realities. Neil O'Donnell to the Jets, Jeff Hostetler to the Steelers, Jeff George to the Raiders, Rodney Hampton to the 49ers, those are the possibilities.

An owner invests years, a fan invests his loyalty, and, there go both, along with the athlete. Sooner or later a backlash is possible. The money keeps going up and the loyalty keeps sinking.

Forty Niners president Carmen Policy called the lure of free agency a siren song. We keep hearing the litany: "I hate to leave the (fill in team here) after all these years." But to borrow the oft-repeated remark of New York Giants executive George Young, "When they say it isn't about money, it's always about money."

Maryland is intelligent, well-spoken, humble and as of Thursday a member of the Oakland Raiders, who gave him $19 million for six years.

Two items conspired to produce the latter circumstance, in addition to Maryland's skill. One was free agency. The other was the salary cap.

When those combine, teams such as Dallas or the 49ers, who don't lose many games, start losing players.

And while Super Bowl champions hardly elicit much commiseration, the process has come under question.

Dallas started from ground zero, from 1-15 in 1989, drafting and trading, practicing and developing, and went from the worst team in football to the best.

And then along come the Raiders or those two over-financed, under-the-cap expansion teams, Carolina and Jacksonville, offering contracts with more zeroes than the Tampa Bay Bucs can put on the scoreboard in two games.

"I did not expect this would happen," said one of the people responsible for it happening, Leigh Steinberg, the agent for Maryland, Davis and dozens of others. "This is an aberration."

That's a word that can be defined as, "Everyone's negotiable."

Steinberg, proud that his office negotiated $80 million worth of NFL contracts in a week - including for some players such as Dallas' Darren Woodson, who re-signed with their own team - contends an athlete has to prepare for the future.

"With the body being so frail," said Steinberg, as he sat next to the 279-pound Maryland, "and your career possibly ending at any moment, players like Russell don't have a choice to stay where they are."

With instability the order of the day, teams going from city to city, players going from team to team, it's the fans who don't have a choice. If they don't lose their franchise - as Cleveland - they lose their favorites.

"This the first year this has happened," said Steinberg. "The first year we've had a significant number of free agents who are very valuable."